Medea, Op. 23, (1946) is a ballet suite by American composer Samuel Barber. It was commissioned by the Ditson Fund of Columbia University for Martha Graham and was premiered on 10 May 1946, at Columbia University's McMillin Theater, New York City.[1] The ballet was originally called Serpent Heart, but the work was revised in 1947 and retitled Cave of the Heart. Costumes were designed by Edythe Gilfond and the set was created by Isamu Noguchi. The original cast list included Graham, Erick Hawkins, Yuriko, May O'Donnell, and other members of the Martha Graham Dance Company.[2]
Although loosely based on Euripides' play Medea,[3] neither Barber nor Graham desired to use the legend literally in the ballet. Instead, these mythical figures served rather to project psychological states of jealousy and vengeance which are timeless. The choreography and music were conceived, as it were, on two time levels, the ancient mythical and the contemporary. Medea and Jason first appear as godlike, super-human figures of the Greek tragedy. As the tension and conflict between them increases, they step out of their legendary roles from time to time and become the modern man and woman, caught in the nets of jealousy and destructive love; and at the end resume their mythical quality. In both the dancing and music, archaic and contemporary idioms are used. Medea, in her final scene after the denouement, becomes once more the descendant of the sun.[1]
Beside Medea and Jason there are two other characters in the ballet, the Young Princess whom Jason marries out of ambition and for whom he betrays Medea, and an attendant who assumes the part of the onlooking chorus of the Greek tragedy, sympathizing, consoling and interpreting the actions of the major characters.
Medea Suite for Orchestra, Op. 23 (1947)
Early in 1947 Barber extracted from the ballet a seven-movement suite for full orchestra. Graham used the titles Serpent Heart and Cave of the Heart for her ballet, but the composer preferred to use the original source of the idea, the Medea-Jason legend, as the title for his suite.
Samuel Osmond Barber II was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. The music critic Donal Henahan said, "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim." Principally influenced by nine years' composition studies with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and more than 25 years' study with his uncle, the composer Sidney Homer, Barber's music usually eschewed the experimental trends of musical modernism in favor of traditional 19th-century harmonic language and formal structure embracing lyricism and emotional expression. However, he adopted elements of modernism after 1940 in some of his compositions, such as an increased use of dissonance and chromaticism in the Cello Concerto (1945) and Medea's Dance of Vengeance (1955); and the use of tonal ambiguity and a narrow use of serialism in his Piano Sonata (1949), Prayers of Kierkegaard (1954), and Nocturne (1959).
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in 1931.
Appalachian Spring is a ballet created by the American composer Aaron Copland and the choreographer Martha Graham, later arranged as an orchestral work. Commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Copland composed the ballet for Graham; the original choreography was by Graham, with costumes by Edythe Gilfond and sets by Isamu Noguchi. The music was well-received at the 1944 premiere, earning Copland the Pulitzer Prize for Music after the ballet's 1945 United States tour. The orchestral suite composed in 1945 was played that year by many symphony orchestras; the suite is among Copland's best-known works, and the ballet remains essential in the Martha Graham Dance Company repertoire.
The Piano Concerto, Op. 38, by Samuel Barber was commissioned by the music publishing company G. Schirmer in honor of the centenary of their founding. The premiere was on September 24, 1962, in the opening festivities of Philharmonic Hall, now David Geffen Hall, the first hall built at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, with John Browning as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.
Samuel Barber's Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra, Op. 22, completed on 27 November 1945, was the second of his three concertos. Barber was commissioned to write his cello concerto for Raya Garbousova, an expatriate Russian cellist, by Serge Koussevitzky on behalf of Garbusova and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Funds for the commission were supplied, however, by John Nicholas Brown, an amateur cellist and a trustee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The score is dedicated to John and Anne Brown. Barber was still on active duty with the U. S. Army at the time he received the commission, and before beginning work asked Garbousova to play through her repertoire for him so that he could understand her particular performing style and the resources of the instrument. Garbousova premiered it with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Symphony Hall, Boston, on 5 April 1946, followed by New York performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 12 and 13 April. The concerto won Barber the New York Music Critics' Circle Award in 1947.
Antony and Cleopatra, Op. 40, is an opera in three acts by American composer Samuel Barber. The libretto was prepared by Franco Zeffirelli. It was based on the play Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare and made use of Shakespeare's language exclusively.
Prayers of Kierkegaard, Op. 30, is an extended one-movement cantata written by Samuel Barber between 1942 and 1954. The piece has four main subdivisions and is based on prayers by Søren Kierkegaard. It is written for chorus, large orchestra, soprano solo and incidental tenor and alto solos.
Medea's Dance of Vengeance is a composition by the American composer Samuel Barber, derived from his earlier ballet suite Medea and loosely based on the play Medea by Euripides. Barber first created a seven-movement concert suite from this ballet, and five years later reduced this concert suite down to a single-movement concert piece using what he felt to be the strongest portions of the work. He originally titled it Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance, but shortly before his death, he changed the title to simply Medea's Dance of Vengeance.
Capricorn Concerto, Op. 21, is a composition for flute, oboe, trumpet, and strings by Samuel Barber, completed on September 8, 1944. A typical performance lasts approximately 14 minutes.
Samuel Barber's Symphony in One Movement (Op. 9), was completed 24 February 1936. It was premiered by Rome's Philharmonic Augusteo Orchestra under the baton of Bernardino Molinari on 13 December 1936. It lasts around 21 minutes. The title given in the printed score of the work is First Symphony (in One Movement), and the uniform title is Symphonies, no. 1, op. 9.
Samuel Barber's Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12, completed in the first half of 1938, is an orchestral work in one movement. It was given its first performance by Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on November 5, 1938 in New York in a radio broadcast concert in which the composer's Adagio for Strings saw its first performance. It lasts around 8 minutes and is dedicated "To C.E." The essay is now known as the First Essay for Orchestra after Barber wrote his Second Essay for Orchestra in 1942. He also wrote a Third Essay in 1978.
Summer Music, Op. 31, is a classical composition for wind quintet by Samuel Barber.
The following is a list of musical works which received their premieres at Carnegie Hall:
Symphony No. 2, Op. 19 is a three-movement work for orchestra by the American composer Samuel Barber. The 25-minute work was originally written in 1944. The work underwent many revisions and was finally published in 1950. The original manuscript was withdrawn by Barber in 1964. He ordered that G. Schirmer destroy the original manuscript and all scores in their library. The work remained unpublished for many years until 1984 when a set of parts turned up in a warehouse in England. Renewed interest in Barber's work led to a 1990 reprint of the 1950 edition.
The Curtis String Quartet was an American string quartet based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
La hija de Cólquide is a ballet score composed by Carlos Chávez in 1943–44 on commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation for Martha Graham. The title refers to the mythological character Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, in the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. The ballet spawned several subsidiary works in Chávez's catalog including his Third String Quartet. When Graham eventually choreographed it, she wrote a new scenario and gave it the title Dark Meadow.
The Third Essay for Orchestra, Op. 47, is a short orchestral work composed by Samuel Barber in 1978. The score is dedicated to Audrey Sheldon.
Cave of the Heart is a one-act ballet choreographed by Martha Graham to music by Samuel Barber. It was first performed on May 10, 1946, with the title Serpent Heart, at the second annual Festival of Contemporary American Music in the McMillin Theater of Columbia University. Serpent Heart was commissioned by the festival sponsor, The Alice M. Ditson Fund.
The dramatic episodes in which Greek mythology character Medea plays a role have ensured that she remains vividly represented in popular culture.
Clytemnestra is a 90-minute ballet choreographed by Martha Graham. It premiered on April 1, 1958, at the Adelphi Theatre in New York with music composed by Halim El-Dabh and sets designed by Isamu Noguchi. Following Cave of the Heart, Errand into the Maze, and Night Journey, Clytemnestra continued Graham's series of choreography inspired by Greek mythology.
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